This is not the point of what he is saying. Read the context of the thread. It is a reply to this: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.unix.shell/msg/30e16d21

This is not the point of what he is saying. Read the context of the thread. It is a reply to this: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.unix.shell/msg/30e16d21dcce4c3f http://groups.google.com/group/comp.unix.shell/msg/30e16d21d... Randal is pointing out that piping the output of ls to the perl interpreter is dangerous and shows the safer way to do what the original poster wanted.